Celebrate Fanart Friday's second birthday with highlights from the last six months!

Fanart Friday returns, not quite as cute as when it was a baby. Last week, we braved the dangers of interstellar invaders in rubber suits with our favorite tokusatsu and super sentai heroes, but this week, it's time to celebrate a birthday! The original Fanart Friday came out on September 23, 2011, and has lasted two years thanks to all of you readers.

I've had this song stuck in my head for a while, for no reason at all.

Your contributions, your comments, even your criticisms help me enjoy doing this column every week... even if so many of you keep forgetting that you can actually ask for characters to show up in next week's installment in the comments. Or you can, y'know, hijack the column like Victoria did that one time, but we'll talk about that later. Now, let's get started!

We started a string of monthly themes with April's look at colors, starting with Seeing Red Edition! Kuroko's Basketball made several appearances during that month for obvious reasons, with Akashi taking the lead!

We had to put the "colors" theme on hold for a week to pay the bills, but I didn't mind at all! Armored Avenger Edition celebrated the release of Iron Man: Rise of Technovore, and gave me a chance to talk about one of my favorite comic book characters!

Lina Inverse is like two steps shy of being a full-on serial killer sometimes--I'm already imagining her cackling laughter! A Thin Line Between Good and Evil Edition explored the grey areas of morality with the "Affably Evil" and "Good is not Nice" tropes!

Take One for the Team Edition covered "True Companions," a trope formerly known as "Nakama." As heartwarming as it is to see true friendship in stories, true friendship can sometimes exist in a story to make it hurt so much more when the knife sinks in your (or your favorite character's) back.

KEEP GOING! HE'S HURTING AS MUCH AS YOU ARE! The "Determinator" trope is all about characters who have a bottomless well of guts, and will keep going when everyone else has long since quit--Never Give Up, Never Surrender Edition is best viewed with the video's sound turned all the way up! (But still, be considerate of your neighbors or housemates. A true badass has common courtesy.)

For June, we took on another month-long theme and explored the shipping fandom (and the most unimaginative titles I've ever come up with)! Shipping Industry Edition, Part I covered not-exactly-canon male/female pairings, and some of the most, uh... pissedpassionate commentary I've yet seen on Fanart Friday!

Finally, The Hard Goodbye Edition gave us a bunch of grim, overdramatic monologues for the noir genre. I was very, very tempted to call it "Noirer than Noir Edition," but The Hard Goodbye is easily my favorite Sin City story, so that settled it.

After actually putting some thought into four straight months' worth of columns, I wanted to relax with a Fanart Friday focusing on the bestest best kind of art in the whole wide world, and so Delightfully Tacky Edition gave me a nice diversion.

Okay, I admit that Total Studmuffin Edition was kind of a stupid name, so I came up with the slightly-less-stupid-sounding Unsinkable Dreamboat Edition, the perfect follow-up to Delightfully Tacky Edition. I am happy that so many people's hearts were stirred by the Alex Louis Armstrong art hidden within!

Way of the Warrior Edition dealt with martial arts, including martial sports like judo, boxing, and MMA! How many of you are ready for Pacquiao-Rios in November? Or are you more excited for UFC 165 with Jon Jones vs. Alexander Gustafsson?

As always, your work is always welcome here on Fanart Friday, so don't hesitate to send your artwork in--I won't hesitate to show it off! Here are the next three upcoming installments of Fanart Friday:

-Next week, on SEPTEMBER 27th, we're readying our anal probes Universal Translators for fanart of our favorite ALIENS! Which visitors from another planet do you think should show up? THIS IS THE ONLY THEME I'M TAKING REQUESTS FOR THIS WEEK!

I can't stress enough how important all of you are to Fanart Friday. If people didn't like or comment, I wouldn't make sure to get this column out every week--I mean, you see how bad I am with Natestalgia! Your praise, your criticisms, even just random comments about the titles that show up on Fanart Friday--they're all taken into account!

But before I go, I am gonna say for the hundredth time that I don't forget titles (I always pick a list of 20-30 titles every Thursday)--I want you to suggest stuff you wanna see on Fanart Friday! Despite what you may think, I haven't seen or read everything, so sound off in the comments--if I'm not able to follow up on a request, I'll say it right there in the article itself and explain why! If you have an idea for a theme you want to see, mention that too!

Thanks again, everybody, for keeping Fanart Friday going for so long! Have a great weekend, and here's to another year of Fanart Friday!